An Iranian security officer walks in front of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr. / ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH, EPA

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

Republican senators will press ahead with a bill that would increase sanctions on Iran as a backstop to negotiations and said no Democrats have abandoned the effort despite lobbying by President Obama.

"We still have 59 co-sponsors on the sanctions bill," said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Barrasso said he spoke to committee chairman, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., "and he's fully supportive" of seeking a vote on the bill.

"We're going to try to attach it to every vote that comes up before the Senate," Barrasso said. "That plan is not changing."

The push comes in a week when Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, said that if Iran decides to resume enriching uranium to levels prohibited by a nuclear deal it could do so in one day.

Such a possibility is exactly what the senators backing the sanctions have been concerned about and why critics demand Obama negotiate a deal in line with United Nations demands that Iran disassemble its centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium and ban it from enriching nuclear fuel at any level.

"We can return again to 20% enrichment in less than one day, and we can convert the [nuclear] material again," Araghchi told the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Channel 2 in a broadcast that was independently translated for The Daily Beast. "Therefore, the structure of our nuclear program is preserved."

Araghchi has said Iran "will in no way, never, dismantle our centrifuges."

President Obama has threatened to veto the sanctions bill that its backers say is needed to persuade Iran to keep its word on any deal. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say the bill would anger Iran and scuttle delicate negotiations.

Obama met Wednesday with Democratic senators at the White House, where he urged them to hold off on new sanctions for six months while negotiators attempt to clinch a comprehensive agreement on its nuclear program.

Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said Obama pledged to sign a bill that would tighten sanctions "if Iran isn't willing in the end to make the decisions that are necessary to make it work," according to the Associated Press.

Passing a bill could reduce the president's flexibility to pursue a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear program, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Iran agreed last weekend that a six-month intermediate agreement reached Nov. 24 will go into effect Jan. 20. The agreement requires Iran to curtail some of its nuclear activities, including transforming its stockpile of nuclear fuel that is close to bomb grade to a form that takes it a step away from bomb fuel.

In return, Iran gets about $7 billion in sanctions relief and a U.S. pledge not to impose new sanctions while negotiators seek a comprehensive deal. Sanctions already in place have cost the Iran economy billions of dollars.

Critics of the deal say it failed to dismantle any of Iran's industrial-scale infrastructure for producing nuclear fuel, which can be used to power nuclear reactors or weapons, and it failed to address the military component of Iran's nuclear program.

The deal, Barrasso said, allows Iran to continue work on the military aspects of its program under the cover of negotiations.

The House passed a bill that would increase sanctions on Iran in July. The Senate sanctions bill would impose new sanctions in six months if Iran fails to follow the interim agreement and dismantle its "illicit nuclear infrastructure," including fuel-production facilities, its heavy water reactor under construction in Arak "and any nuclear weapon and production components."

The bill calls for sanctions to be increased if Iranian-backed militias engage in anti-American terrorism or if Iran tests a missile with range of 300 miles or more.

The interim agreement signed in November says a comprehensive solution would involve "a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program."

Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department negotiator with Iran, says that means Senate's sanctions bill goes "well beyond what is reasonable or likely to come out of the negotiations in a final plan."

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, disagrees. The bill is "carefully drafted so it provides flexibility the administration needs to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis in a way that doesn't give Iran a nuclear weapons breakout capacity," Dubowitz said.

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